Lobster dogs, dream travellers, pulpy fiction and only 850 words of English in the latest science fiction books
In celebration of National Poetry Month, Alex Good of The Toronto Star, reviewed the literary scene and reviewed some intriguing science fiction works composed in verse, including Sheri-D Wilson’s “The Oneironaut”.
An oneironaut is a dream traveller, an explorer of inner space, which in Sheri-D Wilson’s futuristic poem is like being a unicorn ever since the totalitarian overlords of the DoD (Department of Dreams) took over.
The sleep police are the next step in the evolution of the surveillance state, keeping the population in line mainly through use of a pill that prevents anyone from dreaming. But when a scientist named Rain stops taking her meds she becomes “awake for the first time,” enters a cosmic egg and makes contact with a mythic underground movement.
“The Oneironaut” is the first part of a trilogy in verse and it rolls along with the fragmented, manic energy of a light show-cum-spoken word performance, full of exotic textual arrangements and capitalized sound effects. And it’s all put to great use, carrying a political message reminiscent of S.D. Chrostowska’s “The Eyelid,” as the unconscious stands as the final frontier of freedom in a dystopic future that can’t dream of any escape.
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